


All That Glitters

by LegalBrunette



Category: No Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-03-26 10:21:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19003810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegalBrunette/pseuds/LegalBrunette
Summary: J’s a master in his craft. His emerald eyes can tell what’s valuable and what’s worthless. His finely tuned ears hear any talk of fancy treasures around the town he’s in. His well tuned tools get him through defences flawlessly. Since seemingly no one’s caught more than a small glimpse of him yet, everyone calls him ‘the thief where shadows meet’. However even someone as well hidden as him can’t hide from everything…Chapter One: The challenge, demand satisfaction. Rumour has it there's a treasure in a museum that's under security the likes of which even the thief that everyone's talking about wouldn't be able to get through. Such a challenge would be fitting for someone as well practiced as said thief to prove everyone wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing an original story. It may be shaky and flawed. I appreciate polite criticism to make it better, but please don't be rude. I'm only in highschool after all haha.

Preamble

**“Why Hello. You’re the new guard, aren’t you?”**

_“Ah!! Y-Yes sir! I… f-forgive me. I didn’t think you would be here…”_

**“Not here to see my precious emerald’s security is up to snuff?”**

_“I-I mean… I knew you had plans, so I… thought you would have already known—”_

**“One should never leave riches up to chance, good man. Especially not in this time of thievery.”**

_“Yes sir, about that… are you such this is such a good idea, bringing out something with such value to you while the Thief where Shadows meet is out there? Aren’t you worried at all?”_

**“Ah, no. No one would be stupid enough to try and steal something as guarded as this, assuming none of my donations were squandered. Look here.”**

_“…Forgive me sir, but I-I don’t see what I’m supposed to be looking at.”_

**“Precisely here. In the wall. The cameras are imbedded in the wall. If he goes to them physically to shut them down, then even if he does see these tiny things, he’ll never be able to get to their insides without getting directly in it’s line of sight.”**

_“They can never find out what he’s doing to evade the camera’s view; whatever he’s doing, this could definitely put a wrench in his usual schemes! But… what if he… I don’t know, came across a camera plan? He wouldn’t need to touch them if he could just stay out of sight.”_

**“Thankfully, the camera’s aren’t the only protection I sought out. I would spare little expense. A silent alarm’s trip wire is set at any entrance to this emerald’s store room. It’s thin enough that the thief wouldn’t notice it if he had the ability to see in the dark, and the man manning all the cameras, stationed in another building so that he might not be tampered with, would signal to the guards in the building to head down to the display as soon as they can.”**

_“Sir, this is… brilliant! Yes, surely the Thief where Shadows meet would have had to have lost his marbles to attempt anything regarding your emerald! Do you think we might catch him if he decides to test his limits?”_

**“Oh sir, I’m practically counting on that. Now, go settle your nerves before tonight. If you see any guards, spread news to calm their nerves as well.”**

_“Yes sir! I’m sure I’m not the only one who would like assurance.”_

**“Thank you. It’s going to be a long night for all of you, I’m sure.”**

 

Chpt 1

            The only problem with this plan? I had to go in a night early. Don’t get me wrong, I was fully prepared for everything, I just like to give myself specific dates, and I had to go a night earlier than I planned, which annoyed me. It wasn’t even because of something I could control; the night I was going to pull this heist, it was supposed going to be thundering rain. Let me give you a good piece of advice: being sopping wet when you’re trying to steal a probably multi-million-dollar exhibit isn’t exactly the smartest idea. You’re heavy, you leave a trail of water everywhere you go, your shoes squeak, your equipment can get damaged or glitchy, and worst of all you’re pissed off that you didn’t think to check that it was going to be raining this hard.

            Looking back on it, waiting a night or two later might have been better. It’s not like the prize was going to go anywhere. Nobody in the city was stupid enough to try and bypass all the security that the millionaire philanthropist paid for.

            Nobody but me, of course. I mull over that fact as I start to set up my set-up on the side of the museum. I’m the only person in the city who could pull this off. Possibly the only person on this nation’s soil. Everybody thinks I can’t possibly get away with it this time, no way no how. But they don’t know the power of a friendly wager.

            It takes a hot minute, but soon enough I flip the switch, a little green light flashes for a moment, and I know all the camera’s are now looping the camera footage from the last hour. A loop that long ensures that the guards keep passing by the camera so the gorilla in charge of them doesn’t get suspicious when they don’t see _anyone_ pass by. That’s more suspicious than seeing somebody they don’t recognize.

            Just like that, I start my climb to the roof. A part of becoming the infamous ‘Thief where Shadows meet’ was to be just as quick on my feet as I was light. When you’re working in the dark, and can only make out thin outlines the size of trapeze ropes to walk on, you have to be dexterous. I jump and grab onto the edge of the window’s upper ledge and pull myself up. From scoping the place out a couple times, I know that there’s a fire escape on this side of the building that I can safely reach. It’s a short enough jumping distance that no running start is necessary, which makes jumping onto it without having the metal clang and alert everyone in a one-mile radius incredibly easier. That just leaves a crouched walk up to the roof.

            It’s funny, I wasn’t even going to bother screwing with this exhibit before. It was just of some ‘exquisite’ shiny rocks owned by kings and pharaohs or something centuries ago, and are supposedly so easily distinguished that the trinkets wouldn’t even be pawnable unless I went on a cross-country voyage. Which may be on my bucket-list one day, but not now, and not on that night.

            The only reason I decided this was something the ‘Thief where Shadows meet’ would do was because I heard a guard, who’s apparently on the job today, mouthing off about this thing weeks ago. Claiming it would be so impossible to get to the emerald in the middle of the exhibit, that, and I quote, “The Thief where Shadows meet would only pull a heist for it to surrender to the authorities.” This I took personally. My friends and I decided $40 from all of them of I could get in and out without being caught, and have the emerald in hand. And that leads us here to where we are tonight.

            On the roof, there’s a door. It’s usually locked, but some one has to come out here and clean that big ass window they put on the roof. I know entering from the roof is cliché, but it’s also effective. At least tonight it is. The emerald is on the second floor of the building, in it’s own private room, and while trying to go through two floors of guards to get to that thing wouldn’t be impossible, it would certainly be foolish.

            The lock is a basic thing. The two-hair pin method is probably the fastest way to get this done. You bend one entirely out of shape, and bend the other one in half. Use the bent in half one as an anchor while you stick the other one in the lock to mimic the pegs of a key. It takes a couple of tries for each peg, but when you get it the first time, it stays in place until you relock the door. A minute or three later, and I’m inside.

            The first thing I notice as I creep along the wall down the stairs, is there are a lot of guards. Some of them are bound to go off shift soon, replaced by more awake men. Figures; I wouldn’t take any chances of a guard nodding off if a thief who seems to phase their prizes through the wall was on the loose.

            I don’t actually phase my prizes through the wall. I just leave no evidence, which makes that actually seem like a real conclusion.

            The amount of guards were bound to get worse as I got down closer to the emerald, so it’d be suicide to try and sneak past them. The only option to stay out of everyone’s view as long as possible is to go through the ventilation. It’s inconvenient, either hot or cold depending on the time of year, and boring as all hell if you do it correctly, but it’s the fastest way in and out, and I really don’t want to be there all night. So I wait until I see a big enough break in the guards and get to the vent on the wall.

            The key to sneaking into a vent is to only unscrew three screws, take all the loose screws with you. Maybe leaving one behind to hold up the vent’s grate so it looks less out of place, but often that’s an emergency for when you don’t have anything on you that sticks the grate to the actual ventilation, of which I _do_ have in my bag. If you’re well compensated, you can buy (or steal) whatever you need.

            Now I have to crawl through the vent without making a noise. Or at least, making as little noise as I can. There are two approaches. One is to go so impossibly slow, the tortoise and the hare would both kick your ass in a race. The second, preferred method, is to not lift yourself off the vent, and slide your hands and knees across the metal ‘ground’. For that, you can get any old cloths, or fabrics, to go even faster, and quieter along the ground. Unfortunately, you do have to use the former method to get over the gaps in the ground where the ventilation enters rooms. Can’t slide into a hole, or you’ll bring the whole place down on your neck. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?

            After a bit of ‘crawling’ through, I figure based on the lack of footsteps close to me, and abundance of footsteps around the room, that I’m at my destination. This is the tricky part. The easy way to take off the vent cover is on the other side. You’re going to have to find a way to bend metal out of position, without breaking it, enough so that you can slide through, but not enough to make it unable to be bent back into proper shape. Or, if you’re not as secret a thief as I am, you can just kick it off and let the loud clang of metal reverberate through the building.

            The reason I say it’s easier to take the vent off on the other side for someone even as skilled as I am is, even though I can pop this one off with a little effort, it’s not small enough to pull into the actual vent system. What this does is makes me temporarily lose the use of one of my hands. Thankfully, my grapple takes two hands to secure, and stays secure until I unlock it, again with two hands. So I won’t need to worry about it until I get down to the exhibit itself. Then it’s just a game of memory.

            Once my grapple is set, I slowly take the vent off. It makes the sound of it popping off quiet. It only takes half a minute, but the way I’m doing it makes it feel like an eternity. Maybe I’m just impatient. But once it’s off, I feed my wire through my belt and let it lower me down. I turn around after temporarily putting down the vent cover, and there it is.

            A small, boring, plain cut emerald, on display in a beautiful, bullet-proof box, surrounded by public doors, and security doors, all covered with wires I’m not supposed to be able to see that would alert the camera man. (And a ventilation, that no one expected me to go through.) It’s a headscratcher for a moment, why something like this warrant something like that? Yeah, it was donated by a millionaire philanthropist, but if he’s so generous, why can’t he just give them a better one? One that warrants all this security they poured into it?

            I can’t give it too much thought in the moment. I can’t get distracted while the guards are outside. They’re not looking in, not yet, but they might. So, I take to unscrewing the glass box from it’s pedestal. It takes a different screw than the ones on the vents. Thicker, and a different screwdriver head is needed, and their longer screws, but it’s not a problem. And as soon as my gloved hands lift the bullet proof glass away, I hold it in one hand while I snatch the emerald. After inspecting it for only a second, I put the box back down, and cram it into my bag. Now to do the whole process in reverse.

            Screwing the box back into place was fine. So was remembering the vent cover. In the moment, all I do is forget I even got the emerald, and go through my checklist in reverse. Popping the vent cover back into place was a little louder than I anticipated, but it shouldn’t cause any problem. More than likely, it’ll barely reach the guards outside the room, and they’ll assume it’s the building settling. It’s a nice old structure, and these guys seemed to be the usual, so they’re probably used to the museum groaning at them.

            Unhooking the grapple and sliding back through the vents is fine too. It’s amazing how little security cares about you when they don’t know you’re there. The problem isn’t apparent until I get back to the vent I came through.

            There’s a guard. He’s stationary. He’s not facing the vent, but he’s too close for me to risk getting out of this vent yet. Not until he moves, and who knows when that will be. The moment I know he’s far enough from my current position, and my escape point, I can make a break for it. It’s the cowards way out, but he’s bigger than me, and probably not as worried about being silent as I am, as long as it means not letting his catch get away.

            My breathing slows, and my eyes lock onto his feet, never looking away. This is the kind of concentration that you don’t see from co-workers or students. It’s why thieves envy me.

            Finally, I see it. I hear it. A guard mumble something to him, and he starts to walk off, his friend following him. I give them an extra moment to make sure I hear almost the quietest footsteps I can, and start. Crawl outside to the hallway, and screw the vent cover back on properly. Without even stopping to think, as soon as I know it’s properly secured, I run back to my roof escape. That’s when I know I’m in the clear. As far as they know, this door has never been opened tonight. No guards would come to the roof if they know no one’s been up here.

            My lock picks are out, and the door is relocked. It’s as if I was never in there. Now all I need to do is get down to the ground. That’s easier than getting up; I just walk quietly down the fire escape, and jump off it. Somersault on the ground to not get hurt, and I’m down.

            The last thing is to unhook my set-up from the wall, and get the hell out of dodge. Because there’s no real way to detect what the camera’s are going to see, except they will definitely notice that the emerald is gone. The alarm will go off, and it’ll only be a little bit longer before police swarm the area. As long as I’m no where near the museum in the next five minutes, I should be fine.

            Sure, this part is always felt sloppy, but I’m not coming up with another plan until this one is seen through to the end. It’s a little late for that, after all.

The last of my devices are all off the wall. I’m up like a bolt and running. The caper is over. $120 from my friends, in the bag.

            I finally let myself slow to a walk as I hear the alarms go off in the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> J’s a master in his craft. His emerald eyes can tell what’s valuable and what’s worthless. His finely tuned ears hear any talk of fancy treasures around the town he’s in. His well tuned tools get him through defences flawlessly. Since seemingly no one’s caught more than a small glimpse of him yet, everyone calls him ‘the thief where shadows meet’. However even someone as well hidden as him can’t hide from everything…
> 
> Chapter Two: If you don't, find the man, that's your second. J's letting the adrenaline running through him settle, far from the place that's now being investigated for any clues he could have left. However, somehow, J feels as though he's not alone out here...

Fully satisfied by the ending of that scheme, I decide I need to rest somewhere where no one would ever bother to look for me. After the adrenaline stops pumping through my system, I need somewhere to take a break for a night or two before finding somewhere else I can stupefy the public. The best place for that is somewhere that’s either closed down and no one is allowed to go in, so you’ll never be found, or somewhere that’s only open at very specific times of the year, like a beach. I’ve never liked isolating entirely from people, so in my case, a peer on the edge of a lake will do for now before I go find the place I’ll use as a proper room for now. It’s too late at night for anybody to be out here. And even if they did, as long as they didn’t see me from the front, they’d never know what’s in my possession.

            The lake here is important to me, in a weird way. It used to be the kind of place that shouldn’t mean anything to you unless you grew up with it, which makes you nostalgia blind or sentimental or something. Or the kind of place that you think is beautiful, and shouldn’t be developed around, but when it is changed, you don’t complain because someone gives you some stupid reason to make it the way it is. Of course, for the most part, it’s been closed off to the public. There’s one entrance about an hour away from here that gives little boat rides onto the lake, so you can see all the nature around it, like that’s somehow better than just walking around the body of water to see it from every angle.

            There is one closed entrance that’s easy to get through. They bordered it up with chain-link fence, with barbwire at the top of it, so no one tries to jump it, but there’s a way through every locked door, even if the knob doesn’t exist. The easiest way for some crazy people is to brute force it and cut down part of the chain-link. That just leads to the city getting more chain-link and putting some boards in-between the little sockets to make making a hole stupid and pointless. Some slightly saner people try to dig under it in some discrete place, like under a bush, but by the time they remember where they dug it, they’ve given up and made a new one, which just makes more work for the people who run this place. The best way, in my personal experiences, is to find the end of the barbwire, which is in the forest area that no one is supposed to be in anyways and climb the tree next to the fence just slightly; enough that you can grab the top of the fence and pull yourself up onto the fence top and drop on your feet on the other side. Assuming you’re not ridiculous, pretentious, or a complete idiot and wear something like a cape or a big flowing dress, it works without fail. Which is just another reason why I just steal the tightest black clothes I can; it’s not as easy to snag on thing.

            When I’m finally here, I leave the forest as soon as I can. It’s almost autumn, but animals still haven’t hibernated, and I have personally seen at least one giant black bear in this place. That might be why they don’t allow any one to walk freely anymore; they don’t want to be sued on account of somebody being mauled to death. I can’t say I blame them. Not everybody is as fast as I can be. Still, I think moving the animals somewhere where we won’t disturb them, and they won’t kill anybody is probably a much more effective way of dealing the problem then just deciding that walking here is illegal. Then again, what do I care? It’s not going to change anything for me anyways.

            I walk down to the old, rotting peer the entrance leads to. It’ll still be a good few years before it finally falls under my weight. It was built to withstand much larger people than me, and it’s only been a few years since this place was closed down. I sit right in front on the edge, the bottom of the heel of my boots just barely touching the water. I put my bag down next to me and pull out the emerald. It’s so small compared to some of the things I’ve seen on display. I’ve seen diamonds the size of someone’s head shown off to everybody as if it’s nothing valuable. Yet this thing was protected as if the queen had mined it herself and cut it into its pretty little shape. I don’t understand what all the fear was about. If it weren’t for the fact that this was the most invigorating caper I’ve planned in ages, I doubt anyone would have cared enough to steal it.

            That’s how it always starts, you know. You’re a little kid, and you’re just imagining what it would be like to be a thief. You always think ‘I’d never break the law like that!’ for a good few years, but then something happens. Whether that something is your family being poor, or you want to impress some girl, or boy, or your greed just overtakes you, eventually you look at something and ask yourself how you would go about it if you were to steal something. Some lucky people only ask that question. They ask the question, but never have any reason to act upon it, so it just becomes that: A question. The rest of us eventually decide to find an answer.

            The answer is always the fun part. If I was in this for the money like some idiots who call themselves thieves, I could have stopped thieving back when I just began to get my ‘name’ spread around. But when you’re out having an evening to yourself somewhere public, and you hear some smart-ass mouthing off about how fantastic his treasure is, and how valuable it is, and how much security is keeping it locked up, and you’re in my profession, you ask yourself how you’d go about stealing their precious treasure. Most of the time the question follows the more important question of ‘is the challenge even worth it’ which it isn’t always yes. If it’s a boring little laser light-show that will trigger an alarm if you step into it, then it’s a simple trick of find the power to the house and cut the wires to shut off all his power at once. But if it’s protected the way this emerald is… then the thrill of the heist is completely worth it. I guess you could say this line of work is my anti drug.

            But now when I look at this thing again, a new question’s come to my head: Why the hell was this so protected anyways? Was it some family heirloom crap that I didn’t look into? Or was it a present from someone from a different nation? I don’t know what to think, in all honestly. Nothing this tiny should take all that swag. It probably all cost more than this stupid rock is worth. It would be insult to injury to just throw it into the lake at this point, just to show how much of a waste all that swag they had was. But in the end, I shrug, and put it back in my satchel, in a smaller pocket, so it doesn’t get scratched up by my knives. I look out at the lake for a couple minutes.

            It looks like a crystal itself on clear, full moon nights like this when the moon is high up and reflecting off the water’s nearly perfectly smooth surface. I feel a sense of calm fill me. The excitement of the night is officially behind me. I stand back up and head to the waterline, just walking along it. It’s dead silent out here; it’s almost like nothing is awake to disturb the perfect tranquility of this night. If I wasn’t so used to this by now, it would have definitely made me tired enough to let my guard down. But I’ve made this little walk a hundred times; I couldn’t be more desensitized by it.

            However, especially tonight, I can’t seem to relax the same way I always usually do. Maybe that caper was too much more than usual, and I’m still trying to burn off my extra energy. Something got me doubting that’s the case though… I keep glancing around me, as if there’s a ghost trying to haunt me. I’ve never been superstitious, so that can’t be it either. Perhaps I’m getting worked up over nothing.

 _You need to calm down._ I think to myself. Nothings going to happen. _No one saw you enter; no one should have seen you exit._ You’d think with such concrete proof that I’ll be completely safe, I’d lose the tension. But what made it stay was the fact that I could have sworn I heard a footstep coming from behind me.

My fears were confirmed, but not in any way that I could have dealt with. I felt two tough muscly arms grip my wrists so tight, I thought the bones would break. I tried to pull away from them, but to no avail. These weren’t the security for the emerald. They couldn’t be; the physical security guards in the building never saw me, and I had managed to freak out their cameras with my signal jammer; no one who was trying to protect the emerald would have had the chance to see me. So, then who the hell were these two gorillas’ and why were they after me?

Needless to say, I didn’t get an answer. All I got was a little girl instead. Not little as in young, I mean little as in she was short. Her face told me that she was some grown woman who was unfortunate enough to stop growing before five feet. Her tiny form wasn’t my main point for concern. The main thing was I was being held in place while she approached with a rope in her hands and a face that told me nothing about her intentions. All I knew was it obviously nothing nice, or she would have approached me like a normal human being.

She uncoiled her rope. It was too short for her to do any sort of tying, so she was relying on her two big friends not losing her prize. Instead, what she did was make a loop with it around my neck and pulled hard.

_She was suffocating me._

I started thrashing harder, though whether that was survival instinct, wanting to get my hands on her, or a little bit of both, is unknown even to me. Not that it made any bit of a difference. Her friends had a death grip on me, and I couldn’t think straight and try to slip out of their grip while she was choking me. My vision started to fade. The last thing I felt was the fantastic feeling of her relieving the rope from my neck and allowing me to hack up breath, and her two boy friends dropping me to the ground.

Then everything went black.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 3: Have your seconds meet face to face. Negotiate a peace, or negotiate a time and place. After his ordeal at the lake, J is finally starting to awaken in a new, unfamiliar place. And worse, he's not going to be able to get himself out of it that easily. He's got no choice but to wait for someone to let him leave.

I woke up slowly. My eyelids didn’t lift yet to give me visual on where I was, I just listened, and felt myself regain consciousness and feeling in the rest of my body progressively. My throat was killing me. Whoever that little brat was, she definitely didn’t pay any mind to the amount of damage she’d do when she was suffocating me. Still, she could have easily killed me in the position I was in. It’s not like I had much of any way to fight except for thrashing around uselessly with my legs in some vain hope that I’d push her away. And even if I did that, the two muscly types she had tag along would have probably broken them afterwards. So, she didn’t want me dead. She must have just thought I was up to no good in a private, closed off property, and decided to get rid of me in the most painful way possible.

I clenched my fists. It was then that I noticed my arms where hanging. The rest of me was sitting, but my wrists were definitely above my head. I forced my eyes open and craned my neck a little to get visual. They were locked in an iron bar against a stone wall. Pushing against it to try and break the lock would be useless; it looked brand new. I let out a sigh and lowered my head for a moment. Breathing hurts as it is, twisting my probably bruised neck around isn’t making it any better. After taking a second, I look up and straight ahead.

It’s a pretty shallow prison cell I was given. I wouldn’t reach both sides of it if I were lying on the ground instead of against the wall, but someone who was six feet or bigger might. This kind of confinement would never be used in a real prison. Not in _this_ century at least. That girl had me locked up in some special dungeon. Was it her own, or was she contracted to come kidnap someone? The more I thought about it, the more I realized it couldn’t have been a coincidence. But that’s impossible. I hear people talk all the time on the street; they know who I _am,_ but not who _I_ am, if that makes any sense. They know I’m the best damn thief in the business, but they don’t know I exist. To them, I’m all parlor tricks and missing trinkets.

Whoever owns this prison, they took everything off of me. My Riddick knives, and my satchel. That means that, whether they know it or not, they have the emerald. If they’re found with it in my bag, they’ll be accused of stealing it, and being me. I’ll never get it back when it’s locked up in some evidence locker, and someone will steal my rightful title. And I can’t do anything about it unless someone comes down here and is stupid enough to release me.

Out of the darkness in the hallway outside my cell, darkness only beaten by back by little torches on the wall, I see a figured coming through. A tall, lanky man in a suit, with a cane in hand that has a, presumably fake, amethyst orb on it. Then two others behind him. The one on his right is short, and dressed in a beige baggy hooded cloak, and another in some ripped jacket, like he’s trying to really show off his muscles in the hopes that he’ll intimidate everybody he comes across. It’s a kind of funny group of misfits to look at. I don’t have much time to think about how funny it is when they come to a stop in front of the iron bars separating us. The leader of the pack looks close enough that his nose could be sticking through into my cell. Not that I could get up and check, or that I wanted to for that matter.

“I trust you’re well rested. I allowed you as much time as I believed it would take for you to awaken naturally instead of waking you by force as a show of good faith.” The tall one spoke. His voice sounds like it could have been smooth as butter, but he obviously smoked a pipe and ruined it at least slightly. Plus, he’s got this condescending way of talking, in his word choice and his tone of voice. It’s the kind of voice that makes you want to punch something, even if that person is your best friend.  “It would have wasted much less of my time if I had had my friend here slap you awake, you know.”

“How generous of you.” I decide to say in response. He must have expected me to say more, because there was an echoing silence in the room for a good half a minute before he cleared his throat and continued on.

“I apologize for Eika’s intensity when you first met. I told her that I wanted her to try to get you without harming you if it was possible.”

“So, you told ‘Eika’ to kidnap me, but do it nicely.”

“It does sound rather ridiculous when you put it that way, doesn’t it? But I would not call this kidnapping… I’m sorry, no one I’ve ever spoken to knows your name. Everyone just calls you the ‘Thief where Shadows meet’ instead. What should I be calling you?”

I say nothing. A couple seconds passes before he tilts his head, ever so slightly, to his right. A few more seconds pass, and he let out a sigh. He gives the two behind him a near imperceptible nod. The small one in the cloak comes to the cell door and unlocks it. I barely have time to think about how paranoid they must have been to lock the cell door if I’m caught in this iron bar, and I’m given no time to react to the thought before the big guy comes in and slaps me hard against my left cheek. I let out a quiet wheeze of pain before he hits me again. And then a third time. I give myself a moment to recuperate before I look up at the suit.

“So much for not harming anyone.” I grunt through gritted teeth. He shrugs.

“I thought the same thing when you went silent, but that ideal was thrown out the window when Eika put that blue, purple, and black ring around your throat. I must say, for a master in his craft, you don’t seem to be smart enough to know when to just answer simple questions. You must think I’m going to leak your identity. Even though I would not be stupid enough to do so, I guess you won’t take my word for it. Is there anything I can call you?”

I think about saying nothing again, but the big guy looming over here makes me think again. I’d rather come out of this without a major concussion from this big idiot going to hard on me whenever his leader decides to dish out punishment.

“…J.” I mutter. The suit looks like he was expecting more to come out of my mouth. But it’s only a moment before he realizes that’s all he’s getting out of me and continues.

“J it is, then. I am Matthias Bergeron, and I—”

“I know.” I decide to interrupt before he goes on a long rant. “You’re that big name philanthropist everyone’s in love with. You put gave away that emerald to the museum owner. What, do you want it back? You have my bag; you can just take it if you want it so badly.” I was prepared to say more, but his friend gave me another hard smack, and I lost my train of thought. I didn’t care enough to get it back when I saw the look of satisfaction on the suit’s face.

“Thank you, Cason. Now, if I may continue. I do not want that little jewel back. You can keep it, if you really think it has any sort of value. I have emeralds, diamonds, gems that would make any thief foam at the mouth thinking about. I gave it to Mr. McAllister because I knew if the security was talked about in the correct presence, you would come hunting for it.

“I’ve noticed that you don’t steal for the money. What you’ve stolen would have made you richer than most aristocrats in the city over twenty heists ago. But everywhere you’ve stolen from has had seemingly impenetrable security, that you’ve flawlessly snuck past. You were more invested in the challenge than anything. Someone who could so easily go through a gauntlet of danger is very useful. And, as it happens, I have a very good use for you. That I why I needed you.” He makes a strange expression. Probably in reaction to me sneering at him.

“So, you gave up one of your less important treasures, so you’d be able to find me.” Bergeron nods, like he’s pleased that I understood

“In a nutshell. Once you stole the gem, the head of security was to alert Eika with a silent alarm. Once she knew you were there, I had her follow your trail. As good as you are at covering your tracks, she is a hunter with senses trained to follow even the tiniest of signs. Once she found you in that abandon lot—”

“Yeah, I know the rest of the story, I was there. You love the sound of your own voice. So why did you want the elusive thief that no one has caught more than a split-second glimpse of so badly that you’d let someone almost strangle him to death?”

“That should be obvious, J. I want something stolen, and only the elusive thief that no one has caught more than a split-second glimpse of can steal it properly for me.” That’s funny. I let my head rest against the back wall of my cell and raise an eyebrow at him.

“I don’t do contract jobs. Especially for someone who kidnaps me.” Bergeron shakes his head again. His friend looks like he’s about ready to hit me again, but he calls him off by slightly raising his hand.

“This is not a contract job, friend. I’m not paying you. Feel free to brood on that statement as I explain what I need from you.” The more I think about it, the more I hate the fact that he’s right. I don’t have much of a choice but to listen to the heist he wants from me, especially with his gorilla still standing over me with a look of violence in his eyes.

“There’s a special idol being held in high security on an island that’s about a two-and-a-half-day trip away by boat. The exterior is pure gold, and the inside is made of a matter not known to most of this world. It’s quite powerful in small quantities, and it’s not easily found or earned. It could be used to build machines that could create an empire, or level a small country, if the ambition was there. I want that matter for myself, so that I might have the ability to save our nation single handedly, just as I’ve been trying to do for this city of ours. You have to admit, that’s a remarkably generous thing I want it for, considering what I could get from it.”

I close my eyes and lower my head for a moment, letting all that go through my head. He wants me to waste almost three days to go to some remote island that I’ve never heard about before to steal some stupid shiny trinket with a doom’s day enabler inside it. I’m not going to lie, it sounds like a lot of fun to steal, but I would have preferred if he had tricked me into stealing it of my own free will, then having ‘Eika’ knock me out and steal it off of me.

“I don’t like it when it’s unfair.” I finally say.

“What is unfair about this exactly, J?”

“You can’t lose in this deal. You just win less with one option. If I refuse to go out and steal your stupid idol, then you’re going to keep me locked up tight down here until the police come and take me off to a real maximum-security prison. Everyone will hail you as the hero who stopped the ‘Thief where Shadows meet’. You’ll be given whatever you want, save for your precious death bringer. I’m getting nothing from this regardless of what I choose to do.”

“That’s not true at all. If you do this for me, you walk away a free thief. That’s more than I could ever say from any other aristocrat in this entire region. If they had the means to capture you the same way I did, you would have already gone to the highest security prison here. Possibly even in the whole nation.” The condescending look on his face was enough to make me even more pissed off that I fell for such an obvious trick. “I could give you a day to think about it. I have doubts that that’s necessary, though.”

I let out a resigned sigh.

“You aren’t giving me much of a choice, needle nose. Fine.” The suit’s lips thinned, but he couldn’t have felt more pleased if he tried. He nodded, and his gorilla finally moved away, down the hallway away from the cell. The littler friend of his came in to unlock the iron bar keeping me stuck there. That’s when I got a good look at the face under the hood.

“Eika will make sure you don’t attempt to run from town or break your promise.” His readiness makes me groan as my wrists are released. I rub one, feeling the now raw skin gently, as I glare up at that stupid girl. Her silver eyes meet mine, before they trail down to my neck, and she smiles, with annoyance in her eyes, as if she knows she inflicted torture on me, but wanted me dead instead.

I stood up to stretch my legs, and she threw my satchel into my stomach. I opened it to check. The stupid emerald that started all of this was still in there. They also decided to let me keep my knives, but something tells me they dulled them down, so I couldn’t kill either of them upon release. I held one in my hand for a moment before once again glaring at her. Her eyes glared back at me.

Something told me we weren’t going to get along.


End file.
